Whitstone family and supporters hope for more justice
Brydon Whitstone’s family and supporters say they want more justice following the Coroner’s Inquest into his death that concluded Friday at Queen’s Bench Court in Battleford.
Whitstone’s mother said the RCMP officer shouldn’t have discharged his gun when dealing with her son. Brydon Whitstone, 22, from Onion Lake First Nation, was fatally shot in an altercation with the RCMP in North Battleford on October 21, 2017.
Dorothy Laboucane said her son didn’t need to die that night.
“There never will be closure because it’s never going to bring him back,” she said. “They should have stopped the car on their own, long before it ended up where it did. They said they knew a known felon. He never had a gun.”
The jury in the Coroner’s Inquest made up of six people, three of whom self-identified as Indigenous, decided unanimously the means of Whitstone’s death to be undetermined. The presiding coroner had also told jurors their other options may have included homicide or suicide.
After their decision the jury also recommended the RCMP use a different method of immobilizing a person, such as a Taser, rather than use a firearm, to prevent similar outcomes in the future.